Thank you, Dr. Geltner, for your very interesting article on prisons and the need for change.

I spent a little time some years ago with some other women doing a bit of ministry to the ladies in Cook County Jail, Chicago, and got to see a bit of what goes on.

Budgets now have been cut and so certain programs no longer exist. This makes it even more difficult for people who are released to attempt to find work, live with their families, and not go back to drugs.

So much needs to be done to rehabilitate people wherever possible and to provide a safe, clean atmosphere for them to live in as well as some connection to “outside” society and other points you described in your article.

Posted on February 6, 2009

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Comments

Inasmuch as this government and the culture that supports it has become over time a murderous oppressor of people and nations and at the same time continue to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors against all of the world’s inhabitants, I cannot in good faith consent to its rule.

Consent of the Governed

At one time in my life when I was younger and more trusting in those leaders who ruled the nation, I consented to the government’s handling of social, political, and economic affairs and my role in such activities. I impliedly accepted the idea that authority vested in the agencies of government was somewhat sanctified in that all of the people must for the benefit of the world and in pursuit of peace recognize law and public policy standards as outlined by all appropriate agencies of government.

Inasmuch as government has now become unduly oppressive, murderous and inhumane (as evidenced in part by an uninterrupted string of local and global atrocities and crimes against humanity over the past century) I can no longer give my consent to be ruled by the illegitimate authority that calls itself the United States of America.
From my personal experience I find that the criminal and civil laws of this nation (and the cultural standards that support them) are impossible to honor in many instances because they are secret in their making, arbitrary in their enforcement and insufferably oppressive in their application. Such obscure laws, standards and secret rules are used by political fiat to imprison and to destroy lives of people in a kind of game where prosecutor, defense attorney, judge and citizenry all conspire to ruin, imprison or kill the individual for alleged offenses that do not approach in severity the crimes and unlawfully brutal tactics used against them by their detractors; neither do the actual offenses alleged against a person generally compare in degree of severity to the crimes committed against him by the accusers. Those government agents (and their paid killers in uniform or in the private sector) who seek to selectively apply their contrived and illegitimate rule of law against unsuspecting citizens now advance against the people with unwarranted malice, tortuous brutality, and advanced cruel weaponry.

No free man who yet has an ounce of will power and self-respect may therefore submit to the completely out of control government of the United States of America. Any judgment or levy against any citizen or resident of the United States by any current officer of the three branches of government, or by any administrative agency thereof, is by definition corrupt, devoid of legitimacy and intolerable to men and women of good conscience because those who (with evil intent, malice aforethought and wickedly selfish heart) wield the bloody ax of law against our people are the real criminals far more dangerous and threatening to humanity than the millions of men and women imprisoned under Nazi like orders of this hideous regime.

In good conscience and by the remaining will power afforded by Providence I do not give my consent to be ruled by the present United States government because it is a global murderous and criminal enterprise bent on world inhumane domination at any cost.

Progressive Issues

Rosemary Joyce: Archaeology has a checkered history of exploitation by totalitarian regimes. Treating the question of what materials from the past should be preserved, studied, and thus valorized, as politically neutral is part of the reason for that history.